27,000 fewer apprentices?

If the report is correct and we have 27,000 fewer apprentices now than we had a year ago then we have a problem. I suspect we would have a problem even if we had 27,000 more.

We have had a shortage of apprentices for far too long and I doubt it is going to get better any time soon. Making "TAFE" (technical and further education) "fee free" is not the answer either. It is not the answer because trades are no longer seen as desirable career paths by some. Some who would once have gone into a trade are being pushed to go to university and still others find it easier to join the dole queue. 

Just as the UK once had a system of "grammar" and "secondary modern" schools which became "comprehensive" schools we had a system of "high" schools and "technical high" schools. (Yes,  I know that is a wild generalisation but you will understand what I am getting at.) What it meant was that, at the end of junior or primary school you made a choice or had the choice made for you. You went off to a school which often did cater for your abilities and interests.

Ideas changed, especially ideas about "equality" and "equal opportunity".  More and more students were told they should be aiming to go to university, that a degree was essential for employment. The difference in the education system is stark. I first went to a teacher training college. The vast majority of the students had two years there. At the end of it they obtained their "TC", a "certificate" to teach "infant" or "primary" children. I saw the old "handbook" recently. The level you needed to achieve was very, very low. I have no doubt it still produced some good teachers, people who would have been good teachers even without any training or ability to produce a "lesson plan".  

It was only a very few of us who stayed for a third year and obtained a "diploma" instead. I think there were eight in my year. We had to "specialise" in something but the standard we had to achieve was still very low. I remember my lecturers quite well. They were nice enough but only one of them had a doctorate. He was the only one doing any research. I can remembering him sighing when I told him what I wanted to do.

"You won't be able to do that here Cat. We aren't set up for that sort of thing. Go and get a couple of years of experience and then see if you can get into university somewhere."

Now all would-be teachers go to university. They get degrees. I have seen some of their work. There are good students doing those courses, even very good students, but there are also those who are achieving at about the same level as was expected of us. Now it just takes them four years instead of two in order to achieve a degree instead of a certificate. 

The same sort of shift can be seen at TAFE colleges. People once taught there with no qualifications at all apart from practical experience and the ability to impart their knowledge to the students in front of them. Now they are expected to have degrees.

Does it make them better teachers? I doubt it always works that way. My paternal grandmother had just three years of schooling before she was taken out to work on the family farm. She taught me almost everything I know about housekeeping and she was an outstandingly good teacher who explained "why" things happened and "how" they needed to be done. There was also Middle Cat's mother-in-law...and illiterate Greek-Cypriot migrant. She taught me to cook some wonderful Cypriot dishes. She taught her daughters to sew to a very high standard and much more. 

There are likely very many people like them. They do not have "degrees" but they seem to have a natural ability to teach.  We have been "apprenticed" to them in varying degrees. Sometimes it has simply been because we wanted to know but it has also been because we needed to know.  

And I know they did not need degrees to teach us and that we did not need to obtain degrees in order to learn what we needed to know. What we needed was a desire to know...and I am not sure that we can do that when we suggest that apprenticeships are worth less than a degree.